Friday, December 29, 2017

I was reading back in this blog to remember my life as it was and saw a lot of flailing and spittle about Austin vs. Phoenix, and Austin in general. I figured I'd weigh in, in year three, basically a native now, with some observations about the capital of Texas.

1. Locals are low-level obsessed with letting you know they were born here if they were.
Probably for good reason, they resent the extremely dramatic changes the city has incurred in the last 20 years. The younger they are, the less they care, but the old ones are ready to go at any time or place with the comparisons. This is the same everywhere, but not many cities have experienced the drastic changes that Austin has. Now that I am an old-timey resident, I feel for them where I used to just roll my eyes. It does suck, mon. Unless you owned property before the deluge, and then it fucking RULE$$$ and you're hoodrich, where you were dustbowl poor before. I kind of hate those people, because they think they are Richard Branson-style wealth geniuses, when in reality, they're just bumpkinasses who didn't leave the place they were born and eventually struck oil on their land, due to other people. Yeah, I'm looking at you, former landord.

2. Hyperlocalization.
When I got here, I was sort of enraged by how hyperlocal people are, and by that I mean they won't travel outside of the 2 mile radius of where they live. Coming from a city that's legit 500 square miles, I thought that was some kind of full bullshit self-absorbed need to never travel for anything. Everyone I knew in Phoenix lived 50 miles away and we just dealt with it, finding central spaces to meet upon. But, just this afternoon, I was reading the review of a new restaurant that opened about 5 miles away and said to myself, "Sounds cool but I'm not going that far." Turns out there's a valid reason - traffic is truly satanic at all hours of the day, and traffic in that particular direction (central city to south Lamar) is basically totally fucked up at all times. Unless you have to go (to Target or to a special movie showing) you ain't gonna bother.

3. No food to eat
So this isn't entirely true, but Austin's food selection is often just a lot of the same thing. Like upscale versions of garbage comfort food? You got it, dude. Tex-Mex? It's aplenty. Want barbecue, preferably with low quality sides? GET HERE WITH A QUICKNESS. Chinese, Italian, Greek? Forget about it. Yeah, it's here, but it's either a chain, or not good, or real far. I don't know, man. We're no Houston.

4. History 50/50
The large quantity of sentimental boomers still in Austin (see #1) means that there's kinda? some appreciation of older architecture, but the vastly more powerful developers, who are dominating everywhere and everything are prevailing. Austin has a big sense of self and a sense of its history, but it's a very localized, white thing. The people of gentrified neighborhoods are trying to preserve what they can where they can, but it's a tough fight and they don't have the power or money to really get anywhere. So, if you want one vein of history, again, get here, but be warned that it's only fancy white history. You'll never learn about the legacies of black or latino peoples unless you dig real deep, and care a lot.

5. Parties and Events
Yes this city still loves a party. I finally moved away from the Zilker area, home of SXSW, ACL and other massive-ass events I'll never take part in, and yet I can still hear and feel the deep thrumming of bass drifting over the river and trees to my bedroom. Although I've moved miles from the center od destruction, and I'm now in a fully silk-stocking old timey beautiful rich neighborhood, it still touches us. I'm not mad, because it mostly doesn't disrupt my drive or life, but it's there, and I can't go south during the Christmas season because of the completely underwhelming yet popular Trail of Lights.

and that brings us to

6. Local Pride
Yes, the locals be loving their city and state in a way that anyone outside of Texas, who was never a Texan, will never understand. I appreciate the sense of place, but it's still foreign to me to be that defensive of a geographic area. I personally think they should calm down, but they don't care what I think because I'm a dirty foreigner forever. Even someone who moved here at 6 mos old is a foreigner by some estimations. Many believe that you must have been born on the soil, whether it be the deserts of west or south, or in the bayous of the east, or in the distinctly Oklahomaish handle, to have imbued the *magic* of Texasness. Perhaps it's true. Perhaps I could feel the same way about Arizona, if I was possessed by a supernatural sense of pride or MDMA.

You can tell a local by their accent, which is an admittedly pleasant mix of twang and drawl, and which is utterly rare, leading me to believe that they were raised by real Southerners, or that they are exaggerating. Nevertheless, I enjoy it. You can also tell a local by their familiarity and/or love of Ann Richards, which pervades even the conservative-est of local Republicans.

Friday, June 17, 2016

While walking around in my new hood of Zilker, I came across a stark block building in the middle of a huge lot. It's an odd sight in a part of town where every square inch of land is at a premium and new mcmansions occupy entire footprints of land, interspersed among the modest 1940s bungalows that came first.

This desirable and expensive zipcode was once "nothing," according to a middle aged native Austinite I flew home from Phoenix next to recently. "We liked it, but it was a poor area."

It's beautiful, though. The neighborhood abuts Zilker Park, and is filled with old, old oak trees and big shading magnolias. Vines and weeds and flowering plants tangle all over each other here, in the Austinian style. All of the old, gracious parts of the city are full of overgrowth - plants spill onto the sidewalks and streets and grow big and wild. Pastel paint peels from old houses and fences lean on properties that, as values have skyrocketed, you'd never imagine are worth seven figures. You cannot tell a home value by its appearance around here. This is nothing like Phoenix, where properties are pathologically groomed and clipped and repainted and edged, and leafblowers rage at all hours of the day.

But the black church. This is what the sign said:

I have some comments about the sign. 1. Is it that noteworthy that some of the people buried here beginning in 1866 were born before 1840? 26 was that notable an age? Or is 1840 a reference to Austin's early days that I didn't catch? Does it simply mean to point out that they were born in the antebellum slavery period? 2. "In the 1940s, the wooden church burned." Because this was Dixie once, I feel suspicious at the assumedly intentional ambiguity. Why did it burn, exactly?

Sealed tightly forever. Why? Why not a museum to black culture and churches of this era? Why not a space to share this completely ignored aspect of early Austin? This city's interpretation of its own history is so whitewashed. This building is not only significant because it's still here and the land is still safe, but it's a touchstone for a huge group of people who don't get their story told in these parts very often.

Big, beautiful treeish lot.

But as the sign says, it's a church and cemetery. Underneath the weeds in the green lot are headstones. Incomplete headstones. Stumps and chunks, leaning shards, mounds of local lime melding, very slowly, into the native grass and networks of vines.

Someone mows it sometimes. It's rained so much lately that it's impossible to keep the greenery down, and it shoots up in uneven patches. I stepped gingerly in the grass, deep into the shady back area to look at the stones, praying against snakes and cursing that the foliage was so dense and moist that even the big black Texas mosquitos, who normally pass on me, lighted on my bare skin with glee. I don't know how to hike or walk in backcountry, and although this is in the middle of a dense city, it feels distinctly lonely and untrodden. I watched the ground for those snakes.

Age 87.

Worn down stone looking like a natural occurrence and not a grave marker.

There were a lot of spots, much bigger than this, where the grass wouldn't grow. Some of the spots were...grave-sized? Multiple feet by multiple feet. Why? Why would this enthusiastic foliage not grow in certain patches?

Condos to the left, apartments to the right, encroaching right up to the edge of the protected space. No doubt tens of developers have cruised the big empty space, populated only by that lonely box just one step above a shed, and cursed the city for setting it aside. A lot like that? DREAM CONDOS! With a stupid fucking name, like Zilker Commons, or Greenview, or Barton Heights.

I searched for clues about the church and cemetery and came up with little more than what's contained on that historical marker sign. There's an inventory of the remaining stones, or what remained of them ten years ago. I couldn't find as many as the website had. It takes a jaded, weird fucking person, weird beyond any measure I can imagine, to steal a fucking headstone. When I was a little girl, I thought to linger too long by any old grave would tempt the spirit belonging to it to follow me home, and I worried in the car that an illicit tour of the Pioneer's Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona (it was pre-renovation and closed to the public in the 90s) might have caused some old ghost to follow us home and scare me in my bed at night. Needless to say, even this morbid ass would not remove a memento like that from a cemetery, not to mention the fact that it's vandalism and ruins historic spaces for the rest of us. I did take ball moss home from the Texas National Cemetery once (yep, that's a thing, Texas thinks it's a country), but it died.

I mean, seriously. Where the fuck do headstone thieves put their prizes? In their herb gardens? WTAF

Lots to learn about old Texas presidents here in Austin, but there's a distinctive crickety sound when one researches historic people of color around here. Not to sound too like a social justice warrior (I am; suck it) but it's true.

I'll continue my researches, but this might require IRL reading in an archive. I must say it was easier to find the dirt I wanted in Phoenix, even about the most obscure of historic properties.

Next on my list of Austin history rambles is the cabin I see on Robert E. Lee Rd (yuuuuuuuup) as it winds beside Zilker. I have read about very early cabins from city pioneers being relocated to parks and I think that is one. Looks to be half the size of my kitchen from the road, of wood and pebbley mortar construct. The banal occupations of just staying alive have kept me from my history stalker status for too long. Glad to be back at it, unexpectedly reinvigorated by this modest and lonely old church, standing quietly in its field.

I will say that Austin in this early steamy summer is pretty and charming south of the river. The big tangle of green paired with two years of inordinate rainfall has the lightning bugs out in force, and they're at their densest in unmanaged green spaces. Apparently the eggs lay in the earth for about a year before hatching upon us, and in heavy rainfall, they germinate like whoa. They float and twinkle in the dusk all over this area, they flow into my house when I open the door sometimes, they're so thick. Ugly bugs in the light, but neverendingly charming outside.

The lush greenness, with the magnolias and the occasional willow and the crawling crawling vines does suit the mental image I had of Louisiana as a kid, which was where I thought I'd end up! Funny to think of it now with New Orleans in such a terrible state and my new awareness of humidity and my desire to personally strangle most religious conservatives with my own ungloved hands, but you never know.

Two more years in Austin, I think. Barton Springs Baptist Church updates forthcoming.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

I feel like a jerk making fun of him, sometimes, but I feel obligated to because I'm the most qualified. I know that he doesn't share the crackiest of his crack political and conspiracy theories with most people - maybe any other people - and when he does share with me, it's only after about 25 minutes of talking. He sounds indulgent when he says it, like he's been percolating all of these little ideas, but his common law wife got no time for that shit in her day. One moment, we're talking about the Kennedys and Tallulah Bankhead (as you do with your dad), and then:

"Look, 9/11 was an inside job, we know that."

Instantly, my mind pulls out a small notepad. In a moment, I switch from adversarial to bemused. I am Hedda Hopper. "And who are 'They,' Dad?" (scribble) This will be good Skyping material the next time my work bestie and I compare dads.

~~~

Conspiracies According to VB, 2016 Edition:

1. 9/11 was an inside job.
a. It was and yet was not the Saudis.
i. The Bush dynasty had been in bed with the Saudis forever (this I also believe to be true) and so arranging that part was easy.

2. George Bush Sr., as a CIA agent, was in Dallas the day JFK was murdered, and helped to facilitate that murder, because that was also an inside job. Evidence: when asked where he was when he found out JFK was murdered, Bush Sr. said he couldn't remember. "EVERYBODY knows where they were the day JFK died." -Dad

3. Deborah Palfrey, the "DC Madam," was murdered. Because politics.

4. If the RNC can't put someone else up and Trump gets the nomination, then Trump will be assassinated. Because politics.

5. Hillary was already chosen by the New World Order leaders. It's a done deal. They are probably giving her this because they denied her in 2008.

6. Al Gore won the 2000 election. (This I also believe to be true)

Opinions Held by VB, 2016 Edition:

1. The Dems should have put up an attractive man instead of Hillary. Then we'd have less controversy.

2. Bill Clinton looks like he has AIDS. (After researching, I see this is a favorite Breitbart headline)

3. Bernie is too old. (I say, He's one of few people older than you. You should like that. BURN*)

4. Clark Gable was a man's man, in spite of his Hollywood lifestyle, because of what he did in the war.

5. The death of Carole Lombard is one of the saddest stories in the Hollywood annals, and I AGREE.

~~~

So naturally, I can't help but mock his ass, because seriously. It's still a true fact, in spite of all of this, that my dad is the only person that I can talk about damn near all of my main interests with. He cannot be shocked, he knows every name I throw, he dwells in the same eras, he has read or read about most of the things I have read.

The first time I read In Cold Blood, I gushed about it to him on the phone. Among the greatest novels of the 20th century! First true crime, and a high water mark with the soulful retelling of an unthinkable crime and heart-wrenching aftermath. He shocked me because he knew, 20 years after his first time reading it, the names of the murderers and of the dead family. He threw them out casually in the conversation, and knew all of their backstories, too.

In this anti-intellectual, vapid world, I'll take my crazy dad with his conspiracy and book collection, over most other people.

*Making fun of people older than myself staves off the ever-present feelings of impending doom re: my own age. I recently said, during a feud with my haughty, wealthy landlord, "Well, I have something she doesn't: the ability to not pee when I laugh." (catholic cross)

Friday, March 11, 2016

I always thought it was kind of funny that my grandmother still listened to the music of her youth while she hung out at home in her 70s. It can't have been that good, I thought. Not tired of it yet?

One, it was that good, as I later found. I love Glenn Miller just as much as she did. And two, you never do get tired of it.

I found an old Sisters of Mercy cd somewhere in my car, scratched and beaten and practically trash at this point. Within moments I was playing Marian at a dangerous volume in afternoon traffic and wondering what Andrew Eldritch was doing. If women fell in love with Sinatra for his voice, it's because they never met Andrew.

I stand behind that comment.

I guess the SOM are the greatest goth band of all time. Other greats are, as Eldritch often incorrectly claimed about himself, not truly goth. The Cure, Siouxsie, only peripherally goth. Siouxsie's baroque theatricality was much too big for such a label, and Cure are their own genre. Also, the sheer amount of squealing and puppety dancing coming out of Robert should probably cancel out the one time he wore a net shirt and the tens of thousands of dollars he's spent on Wet & Wild products over the years.

I love to get super deep about this shit because I know absolutely no one cares anymore. Except for Anita, but we have to be careful because we'll fight if we tread onto a topic where we disagree, such as Are persimmons good? or What is the greatest goth band of all time? She'd say Christian Death. And, as with many ancient friends who, in their ancientness, take on a sibling-like status, I can't back down. Like two dogs seized on the same toy, we will shake and pull for hours, and it's best to just avoid it.

My goth playlists are my most popular playlists on 8tracks.com. I feel the reason for this is because, unlike the old danceclub djs from "BITD" (as Cher says), I know that people just want to hear the hits. Don't throw in some experimental crap or a bad b-side just to show how advanced your taste is. No one wants it! They want an 80s drum machine, an angry Welsh man singing, deep bass, some synth, and that's it.

When I was trying to write about Bowie's death, I ended up writing about the Nile. It got too tangential, so I deleted it, but it was kind of fun to remember.

I might have been 15 the first time I went to the Nile. Seems so crazy young, but I had already put in lots of time on usenet's alt.gothic, and after reading so much about goth clubs all over the world (mostly in the sentimental memoirs of 80s goths), I had to go to my own.

I went on New Year's Eve and arrived to a big empty room, as most people had chosen parties instead. It was a cavernous black space, occasionally cut through by revolving blue and white lights, and Bauhaus' She's in Parties playing ghostly and tall in the dark. This, I thought. It was everything.

The walls, floors and ceiling were painted flat black, and the space outside the dance floor was pitch black. Flickering prayer candles occasionally disrupted the darkness along the walls. It was a venue for bands on other nights of the week, mostly punk and metal, and sometimes denizens of those scenes intermixed, bemusedly, with the goths, mocking and looking for girls.

Odd to think of being a teenager in this environment, out all night with this extremely motley cast of characters, and odder still that I feel I was entirely undamaged by it. There were addicts and runaways, creepy older men who I disgustedly avoided. Basic guys who thought they'd blend in by putting on their only black Hanes t shirt. You didn't venture into side rooms lest you saw something you didn't want to, like kids shooting heroin, or people having sex while their spurned lovers cried in the corners. That this happened an area overrun by Mormons was funny.

I didn't recognize the danger that was probably around, and I was completely unfazed by the people. Many things converge in a goth scene, and pieces of other subcultural groups accumulate, having nowhere else to go. Sexual fluidity, trans kids, nudity on the dancefloor, bdsm, genital piercings, occultism on behalf of people who actually believed in shit like enochian magic, these things were everyday. Being gay certainly wasn't the source of tension that it could be elsewhere in life and otherwise straight people occasionally dated or experimented amongst their sex without notice from anyone else.

It feels a little silly to even point this out as a thing because it just was, but all of this happened easily 20 years (and many more before me) before the rest of America began its slow tread to acceptance. That was the best part about the scene. Everyone just belonged, without comment, as long as they were there for the music or the aesthetic or, at least, were affiliated with someone who was. It wasn't very complicated. I saw a lot of lifestyles that aren't for me, but no more than I would see on the average trip to a mall.

It's also why I'm so disgusted by people who insist on being shocked by regular-ass deviance from social mores. The dichotomy of being an adult, yet operating with the mind of a flappable, naive child is sort of repulsive to see in action. I can't stand people who shrink from or are shocked by a past or a garden variety weirdness.

Friday, February 12, 2016

So on point.

Instead of hammers, though, my dad talks about knives. "No one ever talks about how dangerous knives are, no one's trying to ban knives! Do you know how messy a knife wound is? My friend the cop said he's more afraid of being stabbed than being shot! People die faster from knife wounds because they bleed out too quickly!" It's called derailing, and the first sign that you've won an argument is when someone starts to do it.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Friday, December 25, 2015

I recently read that the reverberations of life experiences can be passed from generation to generation. That the effects of traumas suffered by recent ancestors can rear up in your own life, can explain subtle lingering tendencies, anxieties, fears and problems. The abuse or sufferings of the great-grandparent can apparently manifest in the 21st century descendant, but how? In what ways.

It seems so fascinating, shocking, yet obvious. It's a scientific confirmation of something we've always sensed - that nothing is ever really forgotten, as much as we wish it to be, and that each experience lives on in a new form.

I hate that. A deeply self-conscious person for most of my life, the only comfort that I could ever accept was that no one would remember the interactions or experiences I regretted. And maybe they won't. But those childhood pangs and young adult anguish could live in the strands of my being for the rest of my life, and in the psyche of a child.

But that's a terrible example. Consider the shadow that may live on behind the eyes of the grandchildren of holocaust survivors, of any victim of a cruel and unimaginable violation or torture. Imagine the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves. How are their lives affected by the pain and struggles of the people who came before them? How are their experiences unintuitively informed by the experiences of their greats and their great-greats?

I scanned back through the last few sets of my ancestors and could think of nothing so extreme. Most of my great-great grandparents dealt with the stress and upheaval of a transatlantic voyage, of leaving their homeland and their native language for a land of commercial brutality. But everything worked out in the end and they all experienced some prosperity and safety within their lifetimes as a reward for their courage. Bad marriages, dead children, economic strife, it could all be in there in the cords of my DNA, but how does that compare to what they carried themselves, from their own ancestors? Starvation and true poverty, uncountable generations spent in subsistence in the mud of some crevice of Europe, now known by another name. Poor Irish, Italian peasants, German laborers. Uneducated people linked by twining strands of bad experiences bound together through generation after generation like held hands.

If the experiences do carry through, how long do they last? Long enough for you to create one for your own descendants? Do the stains of the far flung past fade or remain, diluted but carrying potential, waiting for their activation?

Conversely, the positives do carry forward as well. Perhaps these are easier to see. The tender upbringing, the positive home environment, the lack of desperation can all make for more stable grandchildren. In my family, going back to a time when it wasn't so easily attained, there was an inclination to formal or autodidactic education. When my great-aunt led me on a tour of the farmhouse my grandma was born in, she took us down the stairs to a dank basement and clapped her hand on an old chalkboard. She said my great-grandfather brought this home when the local schoolhouse upgraded to a bigger one. On it, he taught his children, boys and girls, basic arithmetic to reinforce what they learned in the classic one room schoolhouse of Percival. It was long enough ago that it was uncommon to educate daughters, because there was no point - she didn't need to know the rivers of the world to raise a baby adequately.

I know those things matter. And I know they carry forward from generation to generation. I'll spare the tender examples, but my grandmother spent her entire life in the casual pursuit of knowledge and so has my dad. And their examples and teachings have led me to do the same. I think much of this is an innate desire, but is it really? If an example isn't made, do you know the option is there? I've known many naturally sharp people who lack completely the intellectual spirit of the pursuit of knowledge for pleasure. They have the raw material, but it's never quite realized into something coherent or refined enough to do much with. Is that a shitty qualification of the various types of intelligence? Probably. Call the police.

Although the beginning of this thought seems fucking depressing - that we are possibly saddled with the residue of our ancestors' experiences, isn't that somewhat of a comfort? It either explains heretofore inexplicable tendencies, or it lends some gravity to the things prior generations experienced. Because isn't it kind of disgusting that generations of your predecessors had to spend their lives fumbling in the dirt so that you could drop pizza on yourself on the couch while proclaiming that today is the worst day in history because the Seahawks lost?

You know? (I tried to use an example outside of myself for fun. Did it work? My example would be "because Matthew died on Downton Abbey" or something. SPOILER, but as I always say: if you found out after me, you're on your own)

Isn't it terrifying that we don't really know what even happened 50 years ago, not to mention 350 years ago? The hardscrabble lives and lack of choices? If we can't remember cognizantly, then we can remember subconsciously, celluarly. Because I think it's diminishing and unfair to forget that lifestyles that we would consider worse than death were entirely normal once, and that you are made of the victory against nature that was survival, once.

So anyway, everyone's fucked because everyone suffered a while back. Kind of takes the pressure off, though, does it?

Saturday, December 12, 2015

I made a satanic tree skirt. Actually, I made two, but the first one turned out kind of gentle, far more pagan than satanic.

The first one was for me. White fur with a glittery pentacle, fringed in red pom poms. I stand behind it. All of my new friends in Austin are pretty establishment, so when they see my house or the way I dress on my own time, and certainly the crafts I engage in, I feel distinctly reminded of my mother's gentle disapproval. I still love you, but I don't like this.
So they didn't really get the tree skirt.

But I love it. I smile every time I see it. Although my taste is that of a spinster aunt in 1967, I feel very happy to know what I like. I will never struggle to decorate a house. I will never be unsure what image I wish to project. I will never be unsure of what I want to surround myself with for the rest of my life.

The only thing that inhibits me is lack of space, and my student loans.

I've struggled with Christmas in my adult life. It's hard to preserve the childhood magic of a holiday when you scorn the way other people celebrate it, and when you hate religion. But winter has always been a welcome, happy time for me, and I like to observe the way the year turns. I like to see different things in the house, and in my familiar landscape. I like a sense of occasion and ritual. I love to buy presents for other people, and I'm very good at it. So what to do?

Just do it. I was too cool and noncompliant to celebrate anything from holidays to birthdays in my mid 20s, I was like an atheist Jehovah's Witness, but now I just don't give a fuck. I go there. I have a pink tree decorated with antique German glass ornaments. Don't you know holidays are just another way to amass interesting shit?

After I made my tacky pagan tree skirt, I received a request for the gag gift of an unapologetically satanic tree skirt. Christmas is hard for atheists, I think they feel guilty celebrating something so heavily knitted together with Christianity. But when you throw in a tree skirt emblazoned with a baphomet, it feels a little bit easier.

I don't want to show it completely yet because I'm not finished, but I'm very happy with it.

A baphomet made of sequins. There will be pom poms. It may be the greatest thing I've ever created.

I hesitated when the girl at the fabric store eyed my armload of black felt and blood red pom poms. "Whatcha...makin?" she asked. Oh, nothing...

I think this theme combines well with my interest in the overblown tackiness of Hollywood Regency and late 60s ultra lush absurdity. Although Anton LaVey was a silly fool, he cultivated a finely articulated aesthetic that still appeals today. A mix of the medieval and the swinging 60s, with lush velvets, skulls, knives, altars, black candles, topless "witches" with big hair, fake blood, ancient books, bejeweled goblets, I could go on.

I never really bought into his philosophy, because it's for men - ridiculous men. It's all plagiarized from Ragnar Redbeard's 1890 publication "Might is Right," which basically espouses a hedonistic "fuck all y'all" attitude, but which does ring true on some topics, such as how it's ok to reject the contemporary flow of society when you know it to be wrong, even when it means ostracization, because you must be strong enough to withstand the slings of smaller people and smart enough to know they will come. Subtler souls prefer Nietzsche.

LaVey does make unique recommendations for women, which you can read in his book, "The Satanic Witch," and which are pathetic and condescending and all about fashioning sexual snares. His ideas about female beauty really show his age and plebian tastes, too. He may have made his bones in the late 60s, but he was already a bit old then, and his tastes seem so stodgy. He's all about garters and brown pantyhose, bad blonde dye jobs and blue eyeshadow. The ideal woman he described seemed to belong in a bingo hall to me. Truly, only idiots idolize LaVey, but he is a fun character, and I do like that he organized all of these ideas into a formal "religion", recognized as tax exempt by the US government. It's all a fun joke that may bring the attention of young people to ideas they should think about.

Monday, November 9, 2015

I've been in a Virgin Suicides kind of mood lately. A sort of ELO, Carpenters, gold microphone, bad hair mood. A dreamy middle child in a 1970s suburban development mood.

This is basically the last of the walls to fall when it comes to my ideas about things I will and will not do. I don't care!

A few years ago, a friend and I decided to start a band. I told her we should start a Chad & Jeremy and/or Peter & Gordon cover band called Brittany & Anita. She was game - she had a maraca - and we eagerly planned to really annoyingly explore this development during a long winter weekend at her place in New Mexico.

So on a beautifully cold November weekend at the feet of the Sandias, I queued a playlist and told her, Here's the shit you gotta learn to play, bro.

I played "I Go to Pieces" or something, and she froze. Then screamed, "Oldies? I HATE OLDIES!" WHAT, I screamed back, hands flying around my face in horror. "That's what Chad & Jeremy is!" "I didn't know!" she screamed. We just stared at each other in silent remonstrance, both disappointed.

And as amused as I am by her wild hatred of "oldies" and all sentimental music, I dissolved the band.

So I'm not going to send this playlist to her, because somehow I feel this is so much worse in her book than the Everlys or Peter & Gordon could ever be.

This Todd Rundgren song is one of my mom's favorite songs of all time, and ELO is probably her actual favorite band of all time.